Johnson & Johnson has suffered a major courtroom defeat in the first in a wave of lawsuits claiming that talc products marketed by the company for feminine hygiene use caused ovarian cancer.
The outsourcing of medical care in jails and prisons reflects a nationwide push for privatizing government duties. The private sector, outsourcing advocates say, offers better services at a lower cost. But while other government services have outspoken constituencies, jails and prisons do not. Inmates usually have little clout to demand change if they believe they are receiving poor health care.
Federal authorities have warned a Southern California marketing company promoting Lap-Band weight-loss surgery that it is illegally engaging in false advertising that downplays the serious risks of the procedure. The Food and Drug Administration told the firm, 1-800-GET-THIN, that its billboards and print advertising "fail to provide required risk information, [...]
The world's No. 1 maker of medical devices, Medtronic, has agreed to pay $23.5 million to settle federal allegations that it provided kickbacks to doctors who implanted its pacemakers and defibrillators. As Reuters reports, the U.S. Department of Justice accused the Minnesota-based company of making illicit payments to physicians of [...]
Heart attack patients often wind up at hospitals ill-equipped to treat them, and their chances of survival sometimes depend on how quickly they can be transferred to another medical center. Yet a new study has found that nine out of 10 U.S. heart attack patients needing a transfer wound up [...]
Tens of thousands of soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer concussions and other difficult-to-detect traumatic brain injuries, often the result of bombings by insurgents. To identify troops needing care for these injuries, Congress in 2007 passed a measure requiring the military to test soldiers' brain function before they deploy [...]
Three executives of a medical device company, Synthes Inc., have received prison terms in connection with the business' promotion of a bone cement for unauthorized uses. The company's product was linked to the deaths of three spinal surgery patients in 2003 and 2004, although the Department of Justice never proved [...]
Bowing to widespread complaints, the federal government has restored a website providing records of malpractice payments and disciplinary action against doctors. But journalists and patient advocates protest that authorities are continuing to restrict information to which the public is entitled. As The Kansas City Star reports, the federal Health Resources [...]
Last week the Lifespan hospital chain in Rhode Island disclosed that as many as 2,000 patients were given the wrong medicines because of a computer glitch. But, as a report by an Institute of Medicine panel notes, that's hardly the only potential hazard that has emerged amid the federally mandated [...]
Could a technologically sophisticated hacker threaten patients' lives by secretly attacking their medical devices? Reuters reports that concerns about such a possibility have prompted the giant medical technology company, Medtronic, to ask software security experts to investigate the safety of its insulin pumps. Currently, about 200,000 Medtronic insulin pumps are [...]
Four years ago a group of top orthopedic implant makers agreed to pay $310 million in fines to settle federal accusations that they funneled kickbacks to surgeons to get the doctors to use their products. But, according to a a new study, manufacturers of artificial hips and knees have kept [...]
Amid increased awareness of the long-term damage that head-knocking sports collisions can inflict, many student-athletes are taking computer-based tests to examine their memory, reaction time and attention skills. The exams are used to help determine whether athletes have suffered concussions, and if they have recovered. The Washington Post reports that [...]
A federal website recently began publishing patient safety ratings for thousands of hospitals, aiming to put pressure on institutions with high rates of surgical complications and medical errors. The website, Hospital Compare, takes into account how often patients suffer complications such as a collapsed lung, a blood clot, or an [...]
Despite the trillions of dollars the U.S. spends every year on health care, an embarrassing fact persists: Among industrialized nations, the U.S. ranks among the worst in infant mortality. For every 1,000 live U.S. births, 6.75 infants die within the first year of life, according to the Centers for Disease [...]
In April, a 48-year-old Baptist preacher named Gary Steve Moore underwent spinal-fusion surgery at a hospital in Jackson, Miss., to treat a degenerating disk in his lower back. But within hours after the operation, Moore was dead. The tragedy raised the question of whether Moore's neurosurgeon, Dr. Adam Lewis, was [...]
